More fun with Windows Vista UI anomalies

Posted @ 2:03PM

Categories: Musings

I continue to run into problems with the UI in Windows Vista. For example, here is a screenshot of Explorer where the treeview displays a single folder under my D: drive but clearly there are multiple folders as is seen in the listview on the right(pressing F5 to refresh fails to update the treeview):
Windows Vista Explorer

Another problem is clicking on the footer (above) frequently fails to bring the Explorer window to the front of the Z-Order nor does it get focus. The previously active window however does lose focus and if you press Tab the Explorer window will actually gain focus so it's just some sort of wierd state.

Yet another issue is what's pictured below where the combobox at the top of the Explorer window animates like a progress bar and I'm not sure why?? It's been doing this for the past 10 minutes and I'm guessing at this point it's just stuck:
Windows Vista Explorer combobox

Btw, the file open is still driving me crazy with it's tab/focus problems.

Comments [8]

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007 2:15:57 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Have you filed a QC report for these Vista UI issues? ;-)

Kyle Miller

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 2:30:04 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hi Kyle,
In all seriousness is there a place to log Vista bugs? I found an MS site for logging beta problems not but RTM issues.

Steve Trefethen

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 3:10:55 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

You didn't find the site because there's no bug in Vista RTM.

Eric Fortier

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 3:18:21 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I must have missed the memo!

Steve Trefethen

Thursday, March 08, 2007 12:39:44 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

The single folder showing in the left-hand pane is not exclusive to Vista, this also happens to me regularly in Windows 2000 and XP.

The combobox animating like a progress bar, I believe, happens when Explorer is trying to read that directory, in order to give you the display. On the versions of Vista I've tried, it stops animating when the folder is fully read. The fact that yours continues to animate suggests Windows hasn't finished getting all the information it is looking for, which also might cause problem #1 (single folder showing).

Jason Sweby

Thursday, March 08, 2007 7:30:45 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Jason,
FWIW, I've just never seen that problem on Windows XP. Additionally, I let Explorer run for 10 or more minutes and the progress bar never budged from the image I posted above. The drive is 250GB with only 78.5 of that used and probably 30% of that is 3 files that are VM's. Oh well...

Steve Trefethen

Thursday, March 08, 2007 8:18:26 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Steve,

The closest thing I could find is the Microsoft Connect web site. That seems to be Microsoft's QC site. I didn't join, but here is a public list of products they accept feedback on.
http://connect.microsoft.com/availableconnections.aspx

Kyle Miller

Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:59:43 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Thanks Kyle!

Steve Trefethen

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